One thing the hardships of the pandemic forced us to do was to determine how to spend our time during its long months of self-isolation and monotony. For creatives, the long blocks of time held a silver lining—time to explore their art form.

For retired emergency room physician Michael Stang, the pandemic’s mandatory partitioning of life offered a chance to rekindle his lifelong affection for writing. 

That love for writing, meditative walks along the Gunpowder River north of Baltimore, and a fascination with regional history led to a series of ideas Stang began to shape into stories.

The result was The Monster of Gunpowder River and Other Fabrications, a collection of seven short stories Visionary Art Museum director Rebecca Hoffberger calls “seven wonder stories, each structured upon a skeleton of geographic and historic truths…and gifted breath by the pure power of imagination.”

Michael Stang will share his stories on Wednesday, May 31, at 6 m at The Retriever Bar as part of the Bookplate ongoing Authors and Oysters series. 

For more event details, contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or contact@thebookplate.net. This event is free and open to the public, and reservations are not required, however the event on 6/14 with Smithsonian curator, Eleanor Harvey, will require reservations to guarantee a seat. Reserve your space by calling the shop at 410-778-4167. The next Authors & Oysters is scheduled for 6/7 with local favorite Jamie Kirkpatrick. All events are held in the back room of The Retriever, located at 337 ½ High Street in Chestertown, Maryland. 

This video is approximately five minutes in length.

 

Hung Liu had many talents. She was a painter, photographer, video maker, and a printer. Since 2006, several of her paintings have been chosen to be woven into tapestries. In 2004 she attended the Tamarind Workshop at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, established in 1960 to advance the art of printmaking in America. There she developed a unique style of printmaking that involved layers, also in her paintings. Hung Liu won in 2011 the SGC International Award for Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking. 

 

“Dandelion with Mallard” (2016) (32’’x31’’) (monoprint with hand leafing and hand coloring) is from a series titled Drifters. On a road trip with her husband in the summer of 2014, Hung Liu began to photograph dandelions.  Large paintings from the series are titled by location: “Deadwood,” “Little Big Horn,” and “Mt. Rushmore.” Hung Liu appreciated the fact that dandelion seeds are migratory, they cross all earth and water barriers, and then multiply in new lands. The painting and prints depict dandelions past their prime, their blossoms going to seed. Their life is ending but is regenerated by the seeds.

The familiar Hung Liu circles and drips continue in this print. She also adds a brightly colored Mallard duck, in Chinese tradition a symbol of prosperity, abundance, and good luck.

Hung Liu visited the Oakland County Library in California in 2015 to study the archives of Dorothea Lange and the other photographers of the WPA (1939-43) who documented the Great Depression in America.  “Migrant Mother” (2015) (66”x66”) (oil) was one of the first of many paintings and prints in Hung Liu’s exhibition American Exodus. She commented,“This landscape of struggle is familiar terrain, reminding me of the epic revolution and displacement in Mao’s China. Only, now I am painting American peasants looking for the promised land.” 

Although the Dorothea Lange image is familiar to most viewers, Hung Liu said she finds “true inspiration…to discover, to excavate, to peel off the layers and try to find out what was there that got lost, for there is always something missing.” In “Migrant Mother” the face is the same as Lange’s photograph, but the poses of both mother and child are slightly altered, and a background is added. The figures are placed in a room, its dreary grey-brown color resembling a tent, not a house. A kerosine lamp and a bowl are placed on the table,

To offer hope in an atmosphere of despair, Hung Liu has painted a pink square on the wall, and the image of man’s hand holding a bouquet of freshly picked daisies. Daisies are an international symbol of purity and innocence. They represent new beginnings, and they bring joy. She said, “We can adopt each other’s children, so why can’t we adopt each other’s ancestors.”

“Tobacco Sharecropper” (2017) (monoprint with silver leaf) (33”x33”) depicts a barefoot and bare legged little girl helping her father pick tobacco. Hung Liu’s introduction of metal onto the surface of the print achieves a unique multicolored, mirror-like surface that reflects light. Her art education in China included painting of Russian Icons where precious metals, particularly gold leaf, were layered onto the image to increase its spirituality. Hung Liu’s inclusion of silver and gold leaf serve the same purpose. The images of the past are not lost, but brought back from history and preserved for the future.  

Hung Liu states: “With this new body of paintings, I would like to summon the ghosts from Dorothea Lange’s brilliant [black and white] photographs…I personally identify with Ms. Lange’s photographs since I am myself an immigrant from China and was caught up in wars and famines…forcing my family to migrate elsewhere. As an American citizen, I am very passionate about how painting American subjects remind me so much of those of my homeland.”

An exhibition of Hung Liu’s work was scheduled to open on December 6, 2019, at the Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. The exhibition was abruptly cancelled in November.  Hung Liu had agreed to remove a few of her paintings that were considered too controversial, but the reason for the cancellation was suspect, permits to bring her work into China were denied. In an interview with Art News (2019) Liu stated, “The message is anti-war so I thought it was OK. When I talked with my Chinese artist friends about it, they just said one word: Hong Kong.” Hung Liu held a cancellation party on the day the show was supposed to open.

“Sanctuary” (2019) (72”x72”) (oil with gold leaf) depicts a Mexican mother and her baby boy. Hung Liu’s concern for immigrants included those Mexican, Guatemalan, and Central American migrants arriving in large numbers at the American border. She visited the Texas border and talked with and photographed many migrants. The expression on the face of this mother displays a mixture of emotions: joy, thankfulness, relief, and many more. Previously, Hung Liu painted Madonna-like figures in different forms, both Chinese and African American. In “Sanctuary,” Hung Liu placed a solid gold leaf circle behind the woman’s’ head. It is a reference to the Virgin Mary, to the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe, to the halo always around the head of the Buddha, and it represents the sun and hope.  

Hung Liu retired from Mills College in 2014, but she never stopped working. She died on August 7, 2021 as the result of pancreatic cancer. She was 73 years old. She was an internationally respected and beloved artist, and her work was exhibited in over fifty solo exhibitions.  Memorial exhibitions continue to be scheduled world-wide. Her paintings remind us that everyone, no matter the race, religion, or place in the world, should be respected and honored. Having come from an authoritarian country, she loved American democracy. She remarked: “The story of America as a destination for the homeless and hungry of the world is not only a myth. It is a story of desperation, of sadness, of uncertainty, of leaving your home. It is also a story of determination, and—more than anything—of hope.” (Hung Liu, 2017)

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

 

“When I got the United States, I had already lived half my lifetime in China. I did not really think about this; I just got on with my studies and trying to make a success of my painting career…. But I always felt I should be doing more, because of the Cultural Revolution and so on.”  Since her arrival in San Francisco in 1984, Hung Liu’s paintings have dealt with the cultural history she uncovered in old photographs. “I use historical photographs, they’re already grainy and really blurry–so it’s like memory, like our sense of perception, out of focus over time.”

Another of her frequently represented themes is the struggle of so many Chinese people who were displaced as a result of disruptions caused by famine and war. “Refugees: Woman and Children” (1999) (80’’x120’’) is from a series titled Refugees. Everyone, from the very young to the very old, is affected. The old woman has become responsible for two babies placed in large woven baskets.  Sadly, Hung Liu also recognized the photograph might have depicted a mother desperate to sell her infants, not uncommon in China at the time. Her ability to communicate to the viewer sensitive facial expression is remarkable. 

To counteract desperation of the mother, she includes images of hope for the future. In China the crane and sparrows are powerful symbols of happiness. Lotus blossoms grow from the mud and muck at the bottom of ponds, but the flower rises above to bring great beauty and happiness into the world. It is a symbol of resurrection. The images of the Buddha bring a message of hope and a blessing to guide the family to a better life. Hung Liu’s emotional connection to the people, and her painting of the events, is sensitive and strong.  Viewers can easily connect to the people and their circumstances.

“Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth” (2007) (80”x80”) was the cover painting for the exhibition catalog Daughters of China. Hung Liu titled the exhibition after a Chinese propaganda film she had seen in 1948. “Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth” is a photograph of eight paramilitary women who threw themselves into the river rather than be taken prisoner during the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

 

Among the paintings in Daughters of China, several were titled “Tis the Final Conflict” (2007) (66”x66”). The paintings feature the incredibly expressive faces of individual Chinese warrior women, in groups, alone, and some with their fallen comrades. They are a compelling reminder of the terrors of war.

Hung Liu witnessed the Wenchuan earthquake in 1976 that killed 240,000 people. She painted “Richter Scale” (2009) (80”x160’’) in response to the 8.0 earthquake on May 12, 2008 in Sichuan. The quake killed 90,000 people, including the children attending an elementary school, largely as a result of the soddy construction of the building. She was in China in May 2008 for two solo exhibitions of her work in Beijing and to paint landscapes when the earthquake occurred. 

Building materials and bits and pieces of destroyed items are piled high in this thirteen-foot-long painting. A young girl and her little sister sit amidst the devastation. White birds, like angels, fly over the debris but can do nothing. At the upper right an animal’s eye, orange and black, looks out from the pile of wood. 

Hung Liu’s exhibition titled Apsaras (2009) was installed in 2009 at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York City. “Richter Scale” and other paintings of victims of the earthquake were included. Many of the portraits were simply titled Apsaras and a color. Many are of children with bandaged faces. “Apsaras – White” (2009) presents a poignant image of an old woman’s response to what she has seen. The Apsaras, the swirling female figure in blue, tries to bring what comfort she can to the grieving woman. The Apsaras is a beautiful heavenly maiden found in both Buddhism and Hinduism. The Apsaras sings and dances, a much-needed presence bringing calm and hope.

Hung Liu and her husband Jeff Kelley visited Qianshan in the summer of 2006. The province encompasses almost one thousand mountain peaks and forests where Buddhist and Taoist monasteries continue to function. Liu Weihua, Hung Liu’s beloved grandfather, was the foremost Chinese authority on the temples, stone steles engraved with carvings, caves, and carved stairways that populate the area. He photographed them for years; his book Qianshan was published posthumously in 2002. Hung Liu’s exhibition Quinshan: Grandfather’s Mountain (2013) included 14 paintings based on his photographs. “Grandfather’s Rock” (2013) (48’’x60’’) is one of her paintings. Grandfather Liu, a large stone stele from which water flows into a stone basin, and a cluster of yellow chrysanthemums, and the trees in the foreground, all carefully painted, occupy the center of the composition. The distant trees with cloudlike foliage dissolve into the sky. Hung Liu uses two styles of painting, realistic and abstract, to focus viewers’ attention on the transition from earth to sky.  

The cluster of yellow chrysanthemums, a symbolic element in the painting, represents longevity, wealth, and tranquility. The flower is native to China and important for 3000 years. The plant grows in the early spring, but does not bloom until fall. It is a popular flower in Chinese gardens, and in paintings, pottery, and poetry. It is treasured for its medical qualities.

“The Botanist” (2013) (96’’x54’’) is a portrait of Hung Liu’s grandfather. He was a major influence on her life. Liu Weihua focused his life-long study of Qianshan ecology as well as the religious shrines. Hung Liu commented, “I remember a lot of things: his face, his demeanor, his body language. He had hands that were very soft and big. So those kinds of things were very important for me as part of these paintings.”

“Silver River” (2013) is a mural Hung Liu painted on a long wall in the San Jose Museum of Art for her exhibit Questions for the Sky. The brochure accompanying the exhibition states that it is “A meditation on the fleeting nature of life and death, the work itself is ephemeral by design: it will disappear forever when the exhibition ends on September 29, 2013.” Climbing ladders and scaffolds, Hung Liu painted the mural in just one week. 

 Hung Liu painted “Sliver River” (2013) (detail) using traditional black paint in the style of historical Chinese scrolls. Her personal symbols, circles, lotus flowers, and an Asparas, are painted in color.  A video of the work in progress was accompanied by three other Hung Liu videos titled Black Rain, Candle, and Between Earth and Sky.  The videos contained photographs taken by Hung Liu each day with her iPhone the year after her mother died. 

The series of articles on Hung Liu will conclude in the next issue of the Spy.

In my work, my experience as a Chinese immigrant to the United States is quite important, and I also discovered some very important historical photographs, both in the U.S. and in China. We were never allowed to see such photographs when I was in China.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

 

 

Maybe it’s because I made such a deliberate and dramatic personal change when I left I think a lot about what life in a rural community offers us that life in the city can’t. When I left New York, I hoped I would be trading quantity for quality. That has turned out to be true for me.

While I had access to so much in New York, I found, after a while, that I wasn’t really absorbing any of it. For me, the gift of living in a small town is time and attention. Both are more abundant here, and I can afford to be more generous with each than I ever could in the city. My life is richer as a result.

The same principle applies to Shore Lit. As a one-person organization, I will never be able to produce the number of events a great city bookstore does. But that was never the point. My hope in starting Shore Lit was to offer this community a way to connect through literature—to read excellent books we may not have otherwise discovered, and to discuss the ideas presented in those books with our neighbors in a setting that encourages curiosity. It’s about the conversations, as much as it’s about the content. 

With that in mind, I’m experimenting with a new community conversation series this summer. Academy Art Museum Director Sarah Jesse and I will be leading a Summer Book Club in the AAM galleries—one book each month that coincides with the themes of an AAM exhibition. 

These conversations will be intimate, 15 to 20 people tops (depending on the size of the gallery), giving participants the chance to connect with one another and to share their responses, interpretations, and questions about the work—both the art work on the walls, and the text we’re reading. Sarah and I will give some background on each, and we’ll offer some guided questions, but we won’t be lecturing. We imagine these as facilitated conversations, rather than formal talks. All are free (though registration is required for planning purposes), and books are available for purchase at AAM. I hope you’ll join us! 

Register for “Maud Martha” Book Club on June 22

Register for “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” Book Club on July 13

Register for “Solito” Book Club on August 10   

Visit the Shore Lit website for more information on each book selection and its corresponding exhibition.

What Else I’m Reading

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf. I’ve joined A Public Space’s APS Together reading group, led by novelist Mona Simpson, to work through Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece this month. It’s like being back in school, in the best possible way. 

River House, Sally Keith. An elegy for the speaker’s mother and a metaphor for the imperative of life after loss. I cried, and then I read these poems again start to finish.

How To Do Nothing, Jenny Odell. I finally got around to this buzzy 2020 book about “the attention economy.” I had been expecting something softer, more self-helpy, and was pleasantly surprised at the intellectual rigor and insight Odell brings to the topic.

Bonus: Use code BANNEDBOOKS10 to get 10% off orders at Bookshop.org all month long.

What Else I’m Looking Forward To on the Shore This Month:

Multicultural Festival @ Idlewild Park, Easton   

10:00-2:00 Saturday, May 6 Free

A beloved family event returns with music, artisanal goods, and, of course, food: Haitian, Salvadoran, Indian, and Pakistani options will be available (plus hot dogs, sausages, snow cones, and ice cream). 

Performance: Hoesy Corona’s Terrestrial Caravan @ Adkins Arboretum, Ridgley

1:00 Sunday, May 7 Free 

Complementing his site-specific atrium installation currently on view at the Academy Art Museum, Corona will conduct a performance piece in which performers wearing his climate ponchos will walk the Arboretum grounds. 

Theater: The National Theater’s King Lear @ The Avalon Theater, Easton

1:00 Saturday, May 13 $15 

DC’s Shakespeare Theater just set the bar for modern adaptations of Lear with Simon Godwin’s record-breaking spring 2023 production. See how Ian McKellen’s performance compares in this replay from the London stage’s 2018 version.

 

Book Talk: David Sedaris @ Browseabout Books, Rehoboth Beach

6:00 Tuesday, May 30  $18.99 (includes a paperback copy of Happy-Go-Lucky)

If you missed everyone’s favorite Christmas elf at The Avalon last fall, you can catch him on the paperback tour for Happy-Go-Lucky. But the best part of a Sedaris event may very well be the signing line, where he chats and jokes with every last fan. 

Easton-based Kerry Folan is an Assistant Professor at George Mason University. She is also the founder and director ofShore Lit, an organization that aims to bring literary events to the rural Eastern Shore of Maryland. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in the Baltimore Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, and other noted publications.

The Academy Art Museum is pleased to present a series of four Art History Lectures with Benjamin C. Tilghman on Thursdays beginning June 1 from 11 am – 12:30 pm. The history of art is long and vast, and it can be hard to know how to start exploring it. This series will look at four important periods in the history of Western art while also explaining some of the tools art historians use to better understand historical art. By tracing the developments of different genres such as landscape, history painting, and self-portraiture, we can also develop our skills of perceiving changes in style, iconography, and social context that shaped how works of art were made and seen. 

Benjamin C. Tilghman is associate professor and chair of Art + Art History at Washington College and a member of the Material Collective, a collaborative working group of art historians that explores innovative and more humane modes of scholarship. A specialist in Medieval, Renaissance, and Islamic art, he previously worked at the Walters Art Museum and is currently chair of Chestertown’s Public Arts Committee. 

Classes and Dates:

JUNE 1 – INVENTING “ART” IN THE RENAISSANCE – In the 15th century, artists and patrons alike began to think differently about how art could be made and seen. We will explore this momentous shift by examining the innovative work of artists such as Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, and Leonardo da Vinci. 

JUNE 8 – VIRTUOSITY AND THEATRICALITY IN THE 17th CENTURY – Keen intellects, extraordinary technical skills, and a deep love for the dramatic moment distinguish much of the art of this century. Even as we appreciate the distinctive visions of such masters as Johannes Vermeer, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, we can also see deeper shared interests beneath the surface. 

JUNE 15 – REPRESENTING REALITY IN THE 19th CENTURY – What, in the end, should an artist depict in their work? How can they best represent the world around them? We will see how these questions fired the minds of Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet, and Gustave Caillebotte, among others. 

JUNE 22 – MODERNISM: NEW ART FOR A NEW AGE – Famous as the age of “-isms,” the early 20th century was an unruly and sometimes raucous time as artists struggled to make sense of the rapid changes in the world around them. Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Hilma af Klint, and others will help us start to make sense of this restless period. 

Sign-up for individual classes listed above or the whole series. Classes are $24 for AAM Members and $29 for non-members and the series is $90 for AAM Members and $100 for non-members. For more information visit academyartmuseum.org

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was one of the exceedingly small of group of artists known as the Impressionists in 1870’s Paris. They were interested in new scientific ideas and decided to incorporate them into their work.  Most significant was the theory of color, proposed by Michel Eugene Chevreul (1786-1889). His theory of color held that sunlight is not white, the color of paint artists used to lighten all colors.  Nor was it black, the paint artists used to darken objects.  Sunlight is composed of the colors of violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.  The proof of his theory was that the rainbow or light shown through a prism contained these colors. This understanding of the nature of light was entirely new, and contrary to the long-held convention since the Renaissance. 

When the Impressionists went outside to paint, made possible by the invention of the screw cap for paint tubes, they also became aware that water, wind, and the sun move all the time.  To catch movement, their brush strokes needed to be shorter and more visible.  Thus, the works tended to look, according to the critics of the time, messy and sketchy.  We love the works today, but they were dismissed in their day.

Monet’s career proceeded with its ups and downs, but by the late1880’s, he began to concentrate more and more on the effects of light on objects that he painted over and over at different times of day and in different seasons of the year.  The subject of the painting became more and more the colors of the light, not the object painted.  He started painting his series of Haystacks and Poplar Trees in 1891, Rouen Cathedrals in1892-93, and Water Lilies (Nympheas) from1897 until 1926.  He said, “color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.”

Monet’s career provided the funds needed to purchase a home in Giverny in 1890. His interest in horticulture grew. With a group of gardeners, he diverted a stream in his backyard, and in 1899 he began a water garden, including a Japanese footbridge. He painted 250 water lilies from 1897 until 1926.

 

Monet’s first series of water lily paintings (1897-99) featured close-up views of the flowers as in “Water Lilies” (1897).  This first series was exhibited in 1900 at Galerie Durant-Ruel in Paris. From the beginning, the water lily painting had great success with the public. 

Monet’s second series of 48 canvases, including “The Clouds” (1903) (29”x41.5’’), was exhibited in Paris in1907. In this painting, the lily pond and the distant riverbank take up the entire canvas. White clouds are reflected in the moving water. 

In another painting in the second series, “Water Lilies” (1904), Monet painted the scene at a different time of day and different season of the year. In this painting the waterlilies are more colorful, and the reflection of trees on the river bank is evident. Monet wrote on August 11,1908, “These landscapes of water and reflection have become on obsession for me.”

This second series of water lily paintings was so popular that the French Government dedicated two rooms at the Musee de l’Orangerie to his paintings. Built in 1852 by Napoleon III, the Orangerie housed orange trees from the Tuileries Garden during the winter season.  Monet began the eight water lily paintings for the Orangerie in1914, and he worked on them until his death in 1926. 

By 1908, Monet’s eyesight was failing, and it worsened over time. His second wife Alice died in 1911, and he did not paint water lilies again until 1914. “Reflections of a Weeping Willow” (1916) (51.2”x79”) (Metropolitan Museum, New York City) it the result of some changes Monet made in the color palette of his paintings. He chose to paint the flowers with bright dots of color. Monet’s friend George Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France (1906-09 and 1917-20) encouraged Monet to paint larger canvases. The State commissioned 12 monumental paintings to be included in the Orangerie, and that resulted in a Paris exhibition in 1916.

The day after the Armistice (November 11, 1918), Monet offered the French State two large water lily panels as symbols of peace. He worked with the architect of the Orangerie to create two elliptical rooms to display the panels, giving the viewer the “illusion of an endless whole, of a wave without horizon and without a shore.” Monet said of his later masterpieces that they were “one instant, one aspect of nature contained in it all.”

The 82 years-old Monet developed cataracts. In 1923 he had three operations., but his eyesight was severely impaired. “Water Lily Pond, Evening” (1926) is one of his last paintings. The colors are bright and fiery, painted with passion. He wrote, “I realized with terror that I could see nothing with my right eye…a specialist…told me that I had a cataract and the other eye was also lightly affected. It’s in vain that they tell me it’s not serious, that after the operation I will see as before, I am very disturbed and anxious.”

According to Clemenceau, Monet told him in early 1926 that the paintings were almost ready: he was “waiting for the paint to dry.” Monet died on December 5, 1926. He left 22 large panels to the French State. The paintings were taken from his studio and placed in the Orangerie. The museum was inaugurated on May 17, 1927, as the Musee Claude Monet.  At Monet’s funeral, Clemenceau removed the black shroud covering the coffin and replaced it with a flowered cloth, crying “No black for Monet.”

Two statements by Monet sum up his life and his work: “I am only good at two things, and those are gardening and painting.” “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.”

Note:  This article is the 150th in the Looking at the Masters series in the SPY. The first article, published on April 14, 2020, was on Monet’s water lilies. That article contained only one picture of the water lilies.  This 150th article contains additional information, and more important, a greater number of pictures of Monet’s wonderful water lilies (Nympheas) paintings.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.